Shane Warne memorial service to be held at Sydney Cricket Ground

Cricket grounds around Australia are looking to follow Sydney’s lead and hold live memorial services for Shane Warne in conjunction with a live telecast of his official farewell. Find out more.

Cricket grounds around Australia are looking to follow Sydney’s lead and hold live memorial services for Shane Warne in conjunction with a live telecast of his official farewell at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.

NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet said the final details of exactly how the service at the Sydney Cricket Ground on the evening of Wednesday, March 30 will run were still being worked out.

“We are working through that at the moment with (Venues NSW chairman) Tony Shepherd and the team at Cricket Australia,” he said on Sunday.

“We want to run those events alongside each other. Obviously, we will live stream the memorial service in the MCG – that‘s incredibly important,” he said.

Australian cricket legend Shane Warne. Picture: Brett Costello

The event in Melbourne will be attended by Warne’s family, former cricketers and up to 50,000 fans who can apply for a ticket through a public ballot. The event in Sydney will be unticketed with free entry to whoever wants to attend.

The Sydney event will begin before the 7pm Melbourne service and will include live tributes and footage from Warne’s time at the SCG, where he holds the record for the most test wickets.

“Shane Warne is the greatest cricketer I‘ve seen of that generation and well loved by the people of NSW even though he was a Victorian and I think it’s important that we provide the opportunity for people to come to the cricket ground and pay their respects to Shane and to his family and his friends,” Mr Perrottet said.

A Cricket Australia spokesman said: “The SCG has expressed its intention to live stream Shane Warne’s memorial service and is of course very welcome to do so.” Other grounds around Australia including Adelaide Oval are understood to be considering doing the same thing.

Mr Shepherd said the Premier, Sports Minister Stuart Ayres and former Prime Minister John Howard would be among those invited to the SCG for the event.

“We will have tributes and footage of his greatest exploits at the SCG. It is really an opportunity for those who could not get to Melbourne to pay homage to a great Australian cricket player,” he said.

Several Sydney based test players including Josh Hazlewood, Nathan Lyon and Mitchell Starc will be back from Pakistan in time for the service but it is unclear if they will attend in Melbourne or Sydney.

David Warner has said he intends to attend the MCG. “100 per cent I will be trying to get there,” he told reporters. “It’s definitely going to be extremely emotional for everyone.”

Prime Minister Scott Morrison will fly down to Melbourne for the event alongside Simone Callahan, the mother of Warne’s children, Brooke, 24, Jackson, 23, and Summer, 20, who are all expected to attend.

Coldplay frontman Chris Martin, who was a close friend of Warne’s for more than two decades, has said he wants to be involved. Warne’s ex-girlfriend Elizabeth Hurley is understood to be checking her diary to see if she can make it from her home in the UK.

John Knox, chairman of Cricket NSW, said it was important that the people of NSW should also be given the chance to watch his farewell on a big screen at the SCG.

“It is wonderful that the people of NSW get an opportunity to farewell Shane Warne, one of the greatest cricketers of all time and a great character, in Sydney,” he said.

“It is fitting that they can farewell him at the ground where he played his first and last test matches.”

Originally published as Shane Warne memorial service to be held at Sydney Cricket Ground